


Of Hulks and Glasses

by starkanium



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Hulk Feels, Hulk with Glasses, Tony could be an eye doctor, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3258968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkanium/pseuds/starkanium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t hard to see that something’s off with Hulk. Sure, he’s still smashing baddies and saving the world one giant fist at a time, but the way he’s been going about it is… <em>different</em>. Tony seems to be the only one that notices it, and no matter how much he tries to convince the rest of the team, <em>Bruce</em> even, no one seems to listen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Hulks and Glasses

It isn’t hard to see that something’s off with Hulk. Sure, he’s still smashing baddies and saving the world one giant fist at a time, but the way he’s been going about it is… _different_. Tony seems to be the only one that notices it, and no matter how much he tries to convince the rest of the team, _Bruce_ even, no one seems to listen. 

So, maybe, it’s not hard to see that something’s off with Hulk _to Tony_. And, of course, when Tony sees something that needs fixing, he, well, fixes it, because that’s what geniuses do. 

The first step in fixing something is observing the problem at hand and now is a perfect time to do that. 

Tony watches in amusement as the Hulk grabs one of the aliens - giant scorpions with white feathered wings and seemingly opposable thumbs - and tears the thing apart. The blood and guts that splatter everywhere wouldn’t be quite so funny if Cap wasn’t freaking out about the whole thing.

“Hulk, please be more gentle. The clean up for this is going to take way longer than it has to be if you keep shredding them like that!” he shouts over the comm. as if Hulk would actually listen to him.

Hulk glances at Steve, smirking just slightly, before he grabs another scorpion and rips it apart, dragging its twitching body down the street and leaving a vivid trail of blood on the asphalt. 

Tony nearly falls out of the sky, laughing harder than he’s ever laughed before.

“You wouldn’t be laughing if you were down here smelling this, Shellhead,” Hawkeye grumbles, “It smells worse than the kitchen when Tash tries to cook.”

“I’m going to make you regret saying that,” Natasha says, her voice flat and deadly. Tony’s just glad that he’s not in Clint’s position.

“Chatter. We need to stay focused and find out where these things are coming from. There are too many of these things for us to control,” Steve growled as he took out a few more with a single throw of his shield. “Thor, take out any that manage to make it off the ground. Iron man, find the source of these things. Hawkeye, Black Widow, and I will try to cover the ground. Hulk, as always, smash.”

Tony swoops across the sky in a wide arc, keeping a lookout for anything that could be potentially suspicious. He’s just about to ask Thor if he knows anything that could be helpful or… ugh, _magical_ about the creatures when he sees Hulk miss a scorpion out of the corner of his eye.

It’s not really unusual for Hulk to miss a shot with these things being able to fly and all, but as Tony watches him, it keeps happening over and over. He jumps up to snatch one from the air and falls just short. Or he lunges to punch one against the wall only to hit the brick instead because his aim is a few inches too far to the right. His face is scrunched up and his eyes are nearly closed with how much he’s squinting. 

Tony would even be able to brush that off if it weren’t for the fact that this isn’t the first time Hulk’s been like this. The past few battles, Hulk’s been pretty off-kilter and hasn’t been doing as well as he usually does.

Tony decides that he’ll talk to Hulk after he finds out where the scorpions are coming from and how to stop them.

It doesn’t take all that long to find out that they’re all following some sort of queen, like they’re bees or something. There’s a slightly larger one with black wings and glowing red eyes. Once they take that one out, the rest seem to lose all their fight and are quickly swept up by the junior agents at SHIELD. 

Tony’s about to fly home and take a blessedly hot shower when he remembers that he wants to talk with Hulk. He calls after the big guy before he has the chance to bound away to some foreign place to change back into his human self.

“Hey big green. I noticed something’s up with you. You okay?” Tony asks once the Hulk gets close enough to hear.

“Tin Man stupid. Course Hulk okay,” he replies before turning to walk away. 

“Wait!” Tony calls after him, “It’s okay if something’s wrong. I can help you fix it. Do you have a headache or something?”

“No. Eyes blurry,” he answers tersely.

The first thing that comes to mind are glasses. The Hulk needs glasses. Except, that’s probably not possible and it’s probably something much simpler than that. Maybe some debris got in his eye and they were tearing up because of that. Makes a lot more sense that way. 

“Do your eyes hurt at all?”

“No.”

That takes out the debris idea. His eyes would surely hurt if he had a chunk of cement in them, right?

“Okay buddy, you can go now. I’ll see you later,” Tony tells him because he’s just going to talk to Bruce about the issue at hand instead of trying to pry the answer from Hulk. He watches Hulk bound off, headed somewhere toward the Atlantic Ocean, before he powers up his thrusters and starts his flight home.

 

Bruce is standing by the kitchen island with a large plate of assorted food when Tony walks in the room. It’s a ridiculously huge amount of food but Tony had stopped bitching about all his food being stolen once Bruce had told him about his inhuman hunger after a transformation.

“Hey Brucie Bear! How’s your one-man feast going?” Tony greets, snatching a shiny apple from the woven bowl full of fruit on the counter.

“Pretty good. Just had some pickles dipped in peanut butter. Have you ever tried it?”

Tony didn’t even try to hide his cringe at that. Apparently, Bruce’s hormones are always off the charts after a transformation, making him have weird cravings like a newly impregnated woman.

“I’m not gonna lie, that is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of,” he replies with a curled lip.

“Says the guy that eats blueberry sandwiches,” Bruce mutters.

“Hey, those things are amazing!” he protests. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Hulk if you have time.”

Bruce shoots him a wide-eyed look. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?”

“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just, he seems a little off. I asked him about it today before he ran off and he said his eyes are blurry. It’s not possible for the Hulk to need glasses, right?”

Bruce actually seems to ponder the idea, as if it really is possible. Tony almost laughs at that.

“It could make sense. I mean, it is a simple explanation for blurry eyes, but it’s not like we can do anything about it. He wouldn’t be able to sit still for any tests and he’s surely too big to use any equipment and he can’t read. I guess if he does need glasses, he’ll just have to deal with it.”

Tony sighs, nodding. Bruce is right. 

“Thanks for talking to me, though. I can tell the other guy appreciates your concern,” Bruce says before he grabs his plate and heads for his lab.

 

Tony sighs again and sets out to his own workshop.

It takes about six hours of non-stop work to make frames for the Hulk’s new glasses. Tony hadn’t managed to stop thinking about how Hulk may need glasses and he wasn’t able to help himself from at least attempting to help. They’re thick and not the most attractive things ever, but they’re sturdy and will at least get the job done.

His biggest problem, though, are the lenses. He doesn’t know if Hulk is close or far sighted, or what strength he’d need. Hell, he could need bifocals and Tony still wouldn’t know without doing any tests. If only it were possible to get the Hulk to do an eye test… 

An idea pops in Tony’s mind at that thought and he runs with it, creating a large poster with symbols rather than letters and a giant spoon-like thing that he can cover one eye at a time with. Grinning, Tony saves his works and stashes the test in a drawer before he leaves his workshop for some actual rest.

 

The next time they go fight some monster-aliens, Tony manages to get Clint to agree that there’s something wrong with the Hulk, though he’s not convinced that glasses will help. Tony decides that it means he’s going to have to make the best glasses over, then, to prove Clint wrong. 

Once the battle’s over, Tony takes Hulk back to the tower in hopes of having him complete the customized test. He sits the big guy down on the floor of his super strength proof room and holds the giant spoon over his left eye. It takes Hulk a while to actually understand what Tony wants him to do, but he eventually manages to explain that he can’t quite see what’s on the poster across the room. Once Tony has the results he needs, he leaves Hulk in his room to change back into Banner.

 

Tony decides that he needs some more help on the next step of Operation Glasses, which it pains him to admit. It’s just, he’s not an optometrist and he can’t even pretend to be one. Besides, he needs one of those machines that check eyes, anyway. 

He calls up a local optometrist and gets him to the tower in record time. He gives Tony the blueprints for the machine he needs - a phoropter, as he learns from the guy - and a promise to come back once Tony gets his results. 

It takes a time frame of two days for Tony to replicate the phoropter and make sure it’s big enough to fit Hulk’s huge face. Now, all he has to do is sit back and wait for Hulk to make his next appearance. 

 

It turns out that Hulk’s next appearance is only a few hours from when Tony finished his work on the eye machine. They’re called for a minor fight that’s more of a quantity issue than quality. Hulk takes out a lot, but still not as many as he could be if his eyesight was optimal.

“Hey big green! Do you mind coming back to the tower with me for one last test?” Tony asks as the fight comes to an end.

“Tin Man does more tests?” he asks, seeming a little aggravated by the question.

“It’ll only take a few more minutes, I promise. Then you can go and smash all that you want.”

He gets an annoyed grunt of affirmation, and that’s how Tony ends up giving the Hulk an eye exam.

 

As soon as he shoos the Hulk from the room, Tony calls the optometrist up again and has him manufacture a special kind of lens to fit the large frames that Tony had made. He says that it’ll take two months for them to be finished, and Tony manages to bribe him into making it one month.

 

When the lenses come in, Tony meticulously fits them in the frames, making sure that everything is in order. Then, he manages to get Bruce to Hulk Out by creeping up on him while he was working and wrapping his arms around him, causing him to freak out and break his experiment, which led to Hulk. He knows he’ll get a whole lotta shit for it later, but he’s just too excited to care about another Bruce-rant.

 

The Hulk takes quite a while to calm down, but once he does, Tony slides the glasses on his face. Hulk startles, which Tony should’ve expected, and launches Tony’s fragile and squishy human body across the room, knocking all the air out of his already diminished capacity lungs. He lays there, gasping in air for what seems like an eternity, before he gains his bearings.

“Hulk, buddy, calm down. They’re just glasses,” he gasps, managing to sit up. “They’re supposed to help you. Look at me.”

Hulk stops smashing thousands of dollars worth of beakers against the wall and turns toward Tony, the bulky glasses sitting a bit crookedly on his nose. He can see the moment that Hulk realized his eyes aren’t blurry. The way his brow smoothed, and his scowl transformed into a small smile of astonishment. That’s exactly the look Tony was hoping for.

“How do I look?” Tony asks, only a bit hesitant.

“Tin Man look clear,” Hulk says, his voice shaking the entire lab.

“‘Course I do,” he laughs. “I should go into the eye glass business.”

Hulk laughs, his breath hot and sour and filling up the room, but Tony doesn’t stop him. He laughs and laughs and doesn’t seem to want to stop anytime soon. He soon starts chanting “I can see. I can see,” and Tony finds himself laughing too.

 

“Beast, on your left!” Thor bellows as a flying pig dives straight toward Hulk’s head. He manages to turn just in time, swinging a meaty fist at the pig’s head, taking it down easily. His glasses glint in the sun. 

“Good one,” Steve praises.

It’s been a few weeks since Hulk first tried his glasses on for the first time, and his battle skills have improved greatly. His peripheral vision has been enhanced, making his aim much more accurate. His reflexes seem to have boosted and he’s being an even bigger help than he usually is. Tony can’t help but be proud. 

 

“Tony, get in here!” someone shouts from the communal living room. Tony sighs and sets down his mug of coffee on the kitchen counter, vowing to come and pick it back up later.

“What is it?” he grumbles as he leans against the doorframe. The entire team is crowded around the flat screen on the wall furthest from him.

“Watch this,” Clint says, moving out of the way of the television.

A video clip plays with the title “Breaking News: Hulk wearing glasses?” scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It shows Hulk leaping from building to building, taking out more and more flying pigs with each passing second.

“We have footage of the Hulk, one of the six on the superhero team called the Avengers, wearing glasses! This is the first time we’ve seen him wearing them and we can’t help but think he looks sophisticated. We wonder if these glasses are functional or merely just for style.”

The reporter continues, but Tony stops listening.

“Hulk made the news with his glasses?” Tony whispers, somewhat shocked. “It must be a slow day at the news station if that’s the best story they can come up with.”

“This is quite amazing, is it not?” Thor booms with a bright smile.

“Yeah, the people seem to like him better with the glasses. It’s pretty cool, really,” Bruce agrees.

“I mean, Hulk wearing glasses is pretty badass... “ Tony tells them, smiling.

The Avengers all laugh chuckled before turning back to the television and admiring the big guy in his thick new frames.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while and I'd written it down in the notes of my phone and I went through them yesterday and figured now was the time to go for it.


End file.
